1. Field of the Description
The present description relates, in general, to amusement park rides including roller coasters and other track-based rides, and, more particularly, to new ride vehicles that are specially designed to provide passengers with new and exciting ride experiences while riding on a track. In this way, new rides and passenger experiences can be provided with new or even existing track layouts.
2. Relevant Background
Amusement and theme parks are popular worldwide with hundreds of millions of people visiting the parks each year. Park operators continuously search for and research new designs for rides to continue to attract and entertain park visitors. The park operators recognize that their repeat visitor numbers will be lower and lower over the years without changes and upgrades to their rides.
Further, it is often important to build upon or modify existing rides to provide park visitors with new and exciting experiences without the cost or inconvenience of completely demolishing and replacing an existing ride with a wholly new ride. For example, it is much more desirable for a park operator to reuse an existing track and support structure than to remove these and build a completely new ride as this places a ride out of use for a longer period of time and, during construction, is more disruptive to nearby attractions.
In some cases, park operators will even try to retain ride vehicles without modification while providing a “new” show. For example, the theme of a ride may be changed to present sets and characters from a more recently released movie while the actual track and passenger vehicles remain unchanged. In this regard, experiences may also be changed by trying to provide additional interactivity or gaming to try to entertain the passengers.
However, the ride experience itself has remained unchanged as the passenger vehicles travel over the same track. The passengers soon become accustomed to and, sometimes, bored with the ride experience as the passengers begin to remember each corner and its turning sensations as well as each straightaway and each rise and fall along the track. The passengers' views or lines of sight also do not change as the passenger vehicle typically faces forward such that the passengers face or look along the direction of travel (DOT) of the vehicle.